“Video games were barely a blip on the horizon,” Gough says. “I began with some stuff 𝔍that was more educational in nature. After one of the se🔯ssions for this educational stuff, they said they had this other project and character and asked if I’d like to do a quick audition. Their suggestion was that he was an old wizard who should perhaps sound like an older Sean Connery, and that became Diablo’s Deckard Cain. That was the genesis of the voice.”
Gough got into acting on a “whim.” He was on the cusp of graduating with Music and English degrees, but he saw a fly♛er advertising a competition f🐎or student theatre and thought it’d be a waste to shirk the opportunity. He jumped in headfirst and soon learned that he loved acting, even getting a Theatre degree. Eventually, he made his way to Hollywood and found his feet in an emerging medium - gaming.
After voicing Cain, Gough went on to perform in one of the most iconic roles of his career as part of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Elder Scrolls. Here, he played the vast majority of Skyrim’s Nords all by himself and even returned in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Elder Scrolls Online to lend a hand with characters like Shalidor, founder ofꦆ the Mages Guild.
“Some of them don’t sound that different,” Gough tells me. “There are dozens and dozens of them and you’ve got the accent, which you can’t really change up that much. So you try to find little variations. It’s hard because some of the Nord characters are pretty incidental - they just come and go. Others were more substantial like the Companions brothers and Ralof. If some characters are rougher or older, you can make them sound older. Bethesda didn’t mind. Even if they are all similar, they’re the same race a🉐nd grew up together, so they would be similar in a way.
This idea - of expressing similarities between characters while also making sure to highlight minor but important distinctions that differentiate them from one another - is visible elsewhere in Gough’s work, too. He cites 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Gears of War’s Carmine brothers, Anthony and Benjamin, as a particularཧly strong example of this d𝕴ynamic in action.
“They’ve got similarities in the way they sound and their attitudes are a little different, but they’re both kind of younger so they’re a little more similar to each other,” Gough says. “Clayton, the older, more badass brother - he has a little bit of a different sound. He’s not so gung ho - he’s just older and pissed off. It’s a cool acting challenge. Even on stage wherever you 💎see people doing that, where it’s a one-person show and you’re going from 🍎one character to another, you get to assume a physical attitude which helps differentiate things, so it’s a challenge if you’re just using your voice to make all these shifts.
“With The Elder Scrolls Online, I was thinking, ‘Gee, I hope I can maintain the continuity of the Nords so they sound like how they’re supposed🔯 to.’ I’m sure I went with whatever the director was going for, which was the Nord accent that’s nothing specific. It’s a bit of a generic Scandinavian thing - it’s not Norwegian, it’s not Swedish, it’s somewhere in the middle of all that.”
We tend to associate Gough with more heroic roles like the grandfatherly wizard Cain or the heroic Jarl Balgruuf, adamant to stay out of Skyrim’s tumultuous conflict in an effort to protect his people. However, he’s played just as many villains in his time such as Resident Evil 4’s Osmund Saddler, Shadow of War’s Nemesis Orcs, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spyro the Dragon’s Gnasty Gnorc. Villainy is somethiඣng that Gough has always enjoyed.
“Tapping into evil with characters like Gnorc isn’t that big of a stretch,” Gough explains. “It’s almost a release. Some guys naturally sound evil - they’ve got big gravelly voices, but a lot of it is the attitude, like Saddler who was verging on the end of my vocal range. He has a little bit more of a smoothness about him. He was a little velvety. In 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Shadow of War, they’re just evil. They revel in their ♍own filth and it’s always a little more fun when you get to be villains in some way.&rd꧙quo;
Playing a villain 𒆙does have its downsides, though. Orcs are distinct for their guttural enunciation which is no doubt taxing on the actor, especially with screaming and yelling 🦩being thrown into the mix as they scramble to find different ways to die. Gough had a laugh with it, all the same.
“Shadow of War - the Middle Earth stuff - and Gears of War are the most vocally shredding things that I’ve done,” he tells me. “I definitely damaged my vocal cords. And sometimes, after you do one of those sessions, you can’t talk for a couple of hours. It’s intense. And with the orc stuff, it’s all, ‘[incomprehensible grumbling and yelling] Right! Maggots! I love maggots crawling over me!’ You have to scream and die 50 different ways - long, medium, extra l🐼ong. It can take a toll.”
Gough has been behind so many beloved characters across film, television, and gaming, but games are distinct from all other art forms because you are the driving force behind the story, the sole agen♕t of change. It’s an entirely different process to acting as an observer because it’s an interactive medium by its very nature. Because of that, while Gough cherishes the fans of these games, he himself hasn’t made the dive.
“I’m gonna have to ‘fess up,” Gough tells me. &🐼ldquo;I’m not really into games. I’m afraid that I’ll go down the wormhole and never come back, losing whatever time I’ve got be𓃲cause I’ll get so into it that I’ll never return. I know that sounds weird, but I love being a part of them.”